


Post Verum

by orphan_account



Series: Aurum Potestas Est [1]
Category: Panic! at the Disco, Young Veins
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Fantasy AU, Hurt, M/M, Post Apocalypse AU, Ryan Ross does not die, Ryan ross is sorta there, Sarah is a good person, Sci-Fi AU, Spencer is there, The OCs aren't really ocs, and the characters are all melodramatic and existential, and there's quite a bit of ryden interaction, basically a massive trip, but again it's weird, but i add in elements of the fantasy, but like not really, hopefully, in an alternate universe kinda way, it's weird - Freeform, its more sci-fi than fantasy in that everything is theoretically possible, its weird, literal pain, no comfort, nothing makes sense, possibly a series, ryan ross goes through a lot of stuff, there is literally no linear plot, they divorce amicably in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 16:17:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10166927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The world has a tilt and sometimes people fall off.A man, unsure of what he wants but desperate to have everything.A woman, at once real and at once not, more of a memory than he remembers.A girl, afraid of a past that never happened and a future that might not exist.Someone chasing. Someone waiting. And a breaking world to cross to escape. To arrive.And a vision. A death. An inescapable progression.Like clockwork.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i'm the narrator and this is just the prologue

Brendon stared at Ryan for a moment before crossing the room and slamming the door as he left. He leant against it, drawing in a deep breath and fingering the photograph tucked into his pocket. Ryan’s house glared at him, alien, other. Not welcoming. He was not wanted here, not in this place. But her. There were things he couldn’t leave behind. Not yet. Brendon turned back to the door, back to the room where Ryan was hopefully still standing, confused looking. Hostile. Alien, now. He pushed it open to see the other man’s back with his face to the bookshelf. The photograph, rubbed soft in his pocket. The bigger picture.

“Ryan.”

“I can’t, Brendon. I’ve told you this.”

Somewhere outside a car honked, sun spilling in from the open door. The room was west facing and dark now, dusty too, caught in the doorway. Brendon stepped in, stopped blocking the light out. “I need this. Please. I’m not above begging, not this time.”

Ryan continued staring at the bookshelf, face turned away from Brendon. “I haven’t… you can’t ask me to this Brendon. I’m done. I owe you nothing." He sighed and slowly turned to face him. “Please. Leave my house. I don’t need to – just go.”

Brendon fingered the picture and pulled it out, walking back towards the impassive Ryan.

“Leave.”

“I have a photograph. You don’t even have to look far. Just, I just need to know if she’s alive.”

Ryan sighed and took the crumpled image from him. “A polaroid? I don't know how much I could do with this...”

“It’s the most recent one I’ve got,” Brendon said. "I don't need a lot. Just, just if she's alive."

Ryan studied it before dropping it on to the ground and settling down cross legged in front of it. “If I faint, you’re in charge of making sure I don’t choke on my own vomit.” 

He shut his eyes before reopening them, brilliant (superhuman) gold. Brendon blinked, unused to light after being in the murky room. He’d forgotten how intense it was. He checked his watch. Five minutes passed and he began to wander around the room. Teenage mutant ninja turtles. He snorted. God, what even was Ryan’s style anyway. Another five minutes passed with no change, just the steady glow. He walked back to Ryan, sitting down opposite him, on the other side of the photograph. Ten minutes. He waved his hand in front of the other man’s still-glowing eyes but no reaction. More time, he didn’t measure it. Ryan twitched, eyes still glowing with that same steady light, and then suddenly he was grabbing onto Brendon. Arms on his collar. Pulled in, he choked. Then Ryan’s lips were on his, gold filling his vision and he was falling, falling.

He was on a staircase, a teenager cuffed to it, fingers clenching and unclenching around a gun. Thin, not Ryan thin but malnourished, hollow cheeked and eyed and just wrong. Someone yelled and the girl flinched. He was standing in the wreck of a house, watching himself. Sarah, alive. The girl again, lagging behind. Less scared. Muscular, not as thin. A man yelled behind them. Blurred. Stretching across a heat haze and Brendon was in a desert as people rushed past him. Something screamed in the distance. Not human. 

He was strapped down. Struggling. Everything bright fringed. A light in the distance descending towards him and he heard himself cry out. Only it wasn’t his voice. Ryan. Ryan screaming. Or him. They were the same there. Pain in his eyes and nothing. Nothing. Just falling again deeper and deeper till he was back in Ryan’s house, in another room, sitting on a couch with a dog curled up next to him. He, Ryan, glanced up at the clock. Five to nine. Evening, judging by the colour of the sky. There was yelling outside and a sharp crack. Ryan flinched before standing up and, calling the dog, walking towards the door.

“Good girl, hey, Dot. You gotta stay safe for me, huh?” There was something breaking in Ryan’s voice. “I’ll see you soon, hey.” Someone knocked and Ryan opened the door. 

“You should come with me. I don’t…”

“Just take Dot, Spence. I can’t. Please, just take her and get out of town. You’ve got the coordinates? Take your wife and leave.”

“And Brendon? The others?”

“You’ll die if you stay. I’ve told as many people as I can, but you have to leave now.”

Spencer leaned forward and hugged him, Ryan, whichever. “I trust you. Just, y’know, don’t die?”

Ryan laughed before pushing Spencer away. Dot whined but followed Spencer out when he called.

Ryan walked back to the couch and sat down, looking back at the clock. Nine. Nine exactly. The sound of something breaking in the house. Crashing. Glass. Brendon wanted to scream, to tell him to move. Ryan stayed still, eyes trained forward. Footsteps behind him and sharp agony and then he was standing on the beach with some kid, another kid, strumming at a guitar. The sea was boiling, frothing, and he wasn’t moving. The kid looked up.

“He’s here. Good luck.”

They threw their guitar into the ocean and vanished. Something screamed, inhuman, terrible. He flinched, his own hands coming up to cover his ears and something was coming out of that boiling ocean, massive, blotting out the sun and still screaming. He was burning, hair on fire, skin melting but still unmoving as the sand seared into his feet. Air rushed past him, pushing at him. Brendon was unsure whether he had just melted into the place, whether he was baring witness to his own death when he heard himself screaming over the fading noise of the creature, deafened by thwaps against air. 

Then there was nothing. Ryan’s apartment. His own body. His hands to control, eyes to blink. Tears to wipe. He looked up at the other man, only to see him slumped on the ground.

“Ryan. Ryan!”

He shook him and Ryan groaned. 

“Are you… OK?” asked Brendon

“There’s a reason I don’t do that anymore. Fuck.” Ryan pushed himself upright, sweating and leaning on his arms. “She’s alive. For now.”

“What… what about the rest of it? Ryan, you. What?”

“You gotta do something for me. I’ve done this for you, you need to sort this out.”

Brendon looked at the picture. Sarah. “What is it?”

“The first girl. Blue. You need to find her. She’s the puzzle. Find her, you’ll find your wife and get your happy ending.”

“But… I can’t run off to look for some random kid Ry.” He reached down to touch the photograph and it crumbled into ash under his fingers. 

Ryan looked at the dark stain on his rug and sighed. “Find the kid and you find her. They’re connected. Please, Brendon. You owe me this. You’re the only one I know survives the stuff that’s coming. You gotta find Blue. I haven’t got long left before they come, none of us do. You’re safe though. Only you. If you go now.”

Brendon stood up, shakily. “I don’t, I don’t know if I’m OK leaving you on your own.”

“I need do this. Necessary sacrifice and all. It’s, it needs to happen. I’ve known that for a while now. Why I stopped Looking. Figured the answers weren’t all that great.” He smiled slightly. “If you go, you’ll find her in time. Both of them. Blue’s what matters now, I’m done. You need to go.”

He made his way to the door to the room and looked back at Ryan, empty eyed now, burned out. A pile of ashes. Dust and decay. He touched his lips and walked out. Blue. A girl chained to a staircase in an anonymous house. Someone linked to Sarah. Not like he had much better. Just that. Blue.

**Author's Note:**

> just a teaser of what's to come. i'll probably edit this at some point to make it flow a bit better but hopefully this actually flourishes into a thing. Also make it longer. Chapters will probably be 2-3000 words?


End file.
